United States' Highest-Paid CEO Works for Company That's Never Turned a Profit

United States' Highest-Paid CEO Works for Company That's Never Turned a Profit

Here's something fun I saw on Bloomberg TV (whose Market Makers is truly the morning show of champions and/or people who are really interested in the bond market) Thursday morning: The highest-paid CEO in the United States, Charif Souki, works for a company that has never turned a profit.

Souki made $142 million last year, $50 million more than the second-place earner, and since 2002 has worked for a company called Cheniere Energy that according to this article is 50 times smaller than ExxonMobil. What gives? Cheniere, apparently, is expected to be an industry leader in the process of taking hydraulically fracked natural gas and liquefying it for export, and its stock is up 1,800% since 2008. The company has nonetheless faced a shareholder lawsuit over compensation issues and has said it will "reassess" its policies in that department.

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Correction, August 21, 2014: This post originally misspelled ExxonMobil.